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Hugh Laurie
James Hugh Calum Laurie OBE (born June 11, 1959) is a Golden Globe-winning English actor, comedian and writer. Laurie is best known in the United Kingdom, Australia and parts of Europe for his roles in Blackadder and for his long-running comedy collaboration with Stephen Fry which has included A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster. In the United States, he is best known for playing Dr Gregory House on House, MD. In 2006 and 2007, Laurie won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Drama and won the 2007 SAG Award in the same category, all for his work in House, MD. In 2005, he was nominated for an Emmy Award for the role. Early life and education Laurie was born in Oxford in 1959. His father, William George Ranald Mundell "Ran" Laurie, was a doctor and also won an Olympic gold medal in the coxless pairs at the 1948 London Games. Laurie was brought up in Oxford and attended the Dragon School, a prestigious preparatory school. He later went on to Eton and then to Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he achieved a Third-Class Honors degree in archaeology and anthropology. Like his father, Laurie was a rower at school and university; in 1977, he was half of the junior coxed pair that won the English national title before representing England's Youth Team at the 1977 World Championships. Later, he also achieved a Blue taking part in the 1980 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Cambridge lost that year by five feet (1.5 m). Laurie is a member of the Leander Club, one of the oldest rowing clubs in the world. Forced to abandon rowing during a bout of glandular fever (mononucleosis), he joined the Cambridge Footlights, which has been the starting point for many successful British comedians. There he met Emma Thompson, with whom he had a romantic relationship and is still good friends. She introduced him to his future comedy partner, Stephen Fry. Laurie, Fry and Thompson later parodied themselves as the University Challenge representatives of "Footlights College, Oxbridge" in "Bambi", an episode of The Young Ones, with the series' co-writer Ben Elton completing their team. In 1980–81, his final year at university, Laurie managed to find time alongside his rowing to be president of the Footlights, with Thompson as vice-president. They took their annual revue, The Cellar Tapes, written principally by Laurie and Fry, the cast also including Thompson, Tony Slattery, Paul Shearer and Penny Dwyer, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and won the first Perrier Comedy Award for comedy. Career The Perrier Award led to a West End transfer for The Cellar Tapes and a television version of the revue, broadcast in May 1982. It also resulted in Laurie, Fry and Thompson being selected along with Ben Elton, Robbie Coltrane and Siobhan Redmond to write and appear in a new sketch comedy show for Granada Television, Alfresco, which ran for two series. Fry and Laurie went on to work together on various projects throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Among them were the Blackadder series, written by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis and starring Rowan Atkinson, with Laurie in various roles, but most notably Prince George and Lieutenant George; their BBC sketch comedy series, A Bit of Fry and Laurie; and Jeeves and Wooster. The latter was an adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse's stories, in which Laurie played Jeeves' employer, the amiable twit Bertie Wooster. It was a role for which Laurie was considered particularly well suited, displaying his talent as a pianist and singer, alongside his celebrated 'posh' voice. He and Fry also worked together at various charity stage events, such as Hysteria! 1, 2 & 3 and Amnesty International's The Secret Policeman's Third Ball, Comic Relief TV shows and the variety show Fry and Laurie Host a Christmas Night with the Stars. They also collaborated on the film Peter's Friends. Laurie also appeared in an early 1980s British television commercial for Polaroid. Laurie appeared in the music video for the 1992 single "Walking on Broken Glass" by Annie Lennox, in full Regency-period costume as in Blackadder the Third (and opposite John Malkovich, similarly reprising Dangerous Liaisons). He also appears as a scientist in the video for "Experiment IV" by Kate Bush. Laurie's later film appearances include Sense and Sensibility (1995), adapted by and starring Emma Thompson; the Disney live-action movie 101 Dalmatians (1996), where he played Jasper, one of the bumbling criminals hired to kidnap the puppies; Ben Elton's adaptation of his novel Inconceivable, Maybe Baby (2000); Girl From Rio; the 2004 remake of The Flight of the Phoenix; and the three Stuart Little films. In 1996 Laurie's first novel, The Gun Seller, a spoof of the thriller genre, was published and became a best seller. He has since been working on the screenplay for a movie version and on a second novel, The Paper Soldier. In 1998, Laurie had a brief guest-starring role on Friends in the episode "The One With Ross's Wedding, Part Two" as a man seated next to Rachel on a flight to London. His short scenes in the episode have become favorites of fans, largely due to his comically disdainful use of the name 'Pheebs'. Since 2002, Laurie began appearing in a range of British television dramas, guest-starring that year in two episodes of the first season of the spy thriller series Spooks on BBC One. In 2003, he starred in and also directed ITV's comedy-drama series Fortysomething (in one episode of which Stephen Fry appears). In 2001, he voiced the character of a bar patron in the Family Guy episode "One If By Clam, Two If By Sea", and appeared in the series again in the 2009 episode "Business Guy" as Dr. Gregory House. Laurie was the character of Mr Wolf in the cartoon Preston Pig. He was also a panelist on the first episode of QI, alongside Fry as host. In 2004, Hugh Laurie guest-starred as a professor in charge of a space probe called Beagle, on The Lenny Henry Show. Although Laurie has been a household name in Britain since the 1980s, he only really came to the attention of the American public in 2004, when he first starred as the acerbic resident physician Dr Gregory House in the popular FOX medical drama, House m.d.. For his portrayal, Laurie assumes an American accent. As the story goes, Laurie was in Namibia filming Flight of the Phoenix and recorded the audition tape for the show in the bathroom of the hotel, the only place he could get enough light. His U.S. accent was so convincing that the executive producer, Bryan Singer, who was unaware at the time that Laurie is British, pointed to him as an example of just the kind of compelling American actor he had been looking for. Laurie also adopts the voice between takes on the set of House, as well as during script read-throughs. In July 2005, Laurie was nominated for an Emmy Award for his role in House. Although he did not win, he did receive a Golden Globe in 2006 for his work on the series. Laurie has also been awarded a large increase in salary, from what was rumored to be a mid-range five-figure sum to $300,000 per episode. His House contract was also extended for an additional year, allowing for at least a fourth season to be produced.Zap2it.com: Raise Prescribed for 'House' Star Laurie was not nominated for the 2006 Emmys, apparently to the "outrage" of Fox executives.The First Post: Why Hugh Laurie was overlooked at this years Emmys At the 2006 Primetime Emmy Awards, Laurie parodied his House character by rapidly diagnosing host Conan O'Brien and then proceeded to grope him as the latter stepped into one of Princeton-Plainboro Teaching Hospital's many clinic rooms asking for help to get to the Emmys on time. He would later go on to speak in French whilst presenting an award with Dame Helen Mirren on stage. In July 2006, Laurie appeared on Bravo's Inside the Actor's Studio, where he also performed one of his own songs, "Mystery", on the piano with vocal accompaniment. It was recently announced that Hugh Laurie's comedy partner, Stephen Fry, would make a cameo appearance in House, but due to commitments in England, Fry is unable to do so for now.Fry unable to film House cameo with Laurie On October 28, 2006, Laurie hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live where he famously, mostly to internet fans, dressed in drag in a sketch about a black man (Kenan Thompson) with a broken leg who accuses his doctor of being dishonest. Laurie played the black man's wife. On January 15, 2007, Hugh Laurie won a second Golden Globe for best actor in a drama for his portrayal of Gregory House in House. On January 28, 2007 Hugh Laurie received the Screen Actor's Guild Award for Best Actor in a Television Drama. Personal life Hugh Laurie married Jo Green, a theater administrator, in June 1989. They live in north London with their daughter, Rebecca (born 1993), and two sons, Bill (born 1991) and Charlie (born 1988). Rebecca had a role in the film Wit as five-year-old Vivian Bearing. The starring role of the adult Vivian was played by Emma Thompson, a close friend of Laurie since their years at Cambridge. His friend Stephen Fry is his children's godfather. He stated on BBC Radio 2 in an interview with Steve Wright in January 2006 that he is currently living in an apartment in West Hollywood while he is in the United States working on House. Laurie is a skilled musician. He can play the piano, guitar, harmonica and saxophone. He has displayed his musical talents in episodes of several series, most notably A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, House and when he hosted Saturday Night Live on October 28th, 2006. Laurie was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2007 New Year Honors List for his services to drama."Rod and Zara top New Year Honors", BBC, 29 December 2006 Awards Emmy Awards * 2005 - Nominated - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series * 2007 - Nominated - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series * 2008 - Nominated - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series Golden Globe Awards * 2006 - Winner - Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama * 2007 - Winner - Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama Satellite Awards * 2005 - Winner - Outstanding Actor in a Series, Drama * 2006 - Winner - Outstanding Actor in a Series, Drama Screen Actors Guild Awards * 2006 - Nominated - Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series * 2007 - Winner - Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series Television Critics Association * 2005 - Winner - Individual Achievement in Drama * 2006 - Winner - Individual Achievement in Drama Quotes * Emma Thompson on Laurie: "He is very very lovable. He is one of those rare people who manages to be lugubriously sexy, like a well-hung eel." hughlaurie.co.uk: Insight into Hugh * On the birth of his second son during filming for Jeeves and Wooster: "We were halfway through a scene and the phone call came from the hospital — I didn't even know she was pregnant, it was such a shock — and I had to, we'd done all my bit, with the camera pointing my way, so I ran off to the hospital in my costume, which was very exciting, well, vaguely exciting, and poor old Stephen was left to do the rest of the scene just to thin air. Which was probably preferable, I dunno." Stephen: "Yes, thin air's a better actor." Hugh: "Yeah, not so wooden." Interview on Wogan, BBC1 * Christopher Buckley, The New York Times Book Review, on Laurie's book The Gun Seller: "As a writer, Mr. Laurie is smart, charming, warm, cool (if need be) and high-spirited ... This is a genuinely witty and sophisticated entertainment." * On winning his second Golden Globe for House: "I'm speechless. I am, literally, without a speech." * Nigel Havers on Hugh Laurie: "He was an immensly dangerous man, a dangerous influence, you know, whenever he was around there was always this feeling of oooh, anything could happen. Hugh Laurie, on the other hand, was one of the dullest men I've ever met." Trivia * Admitted in an interview with Rolling Stone and during a guest appearance on The Tonight Show that he once tried Vicodin as part of his preparation for the role of Dr House. * Has struggled with severe clinical depression off and on over the course of his life, and continues to receive regular treatment from a psychotherapist. He stated in an interview that he first concluded he had a problem while on a movie set in 1996, when he realized that the car chase he was filming neither excited nor frightened him (he said that he felt, in fact, bored).BBC News Magazine: Faces of the week"Boredom," he commented in an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, "is not an appropriate response to exploding cars." * Was cast as Daily Planet editor Perry White in the film Superman Returns but had to bow out of the project due to his involvement in House (incidentally, the series is produced by Bad Hat Harry Productions, which is owned by Superman Returns director Bryan Singer). * Laurie admires the writings of P.G. Wodehouse: he explained in a 27 May 1999 article in The Daily Telegraph how reading Wodehouse novels had saved his life.pgwodehousebooks.com: Wodehouse saved my life * Is close friends with his House co-star Robert Sean Leonard. * Is a "Port" side sweep rower, rowing in 4 seat for the 1980 Boat Race * When executive producer Bryan Singer cast him as Greg House, Singer was unaware Laurie was British. * Was on record predicting the Giants to beat the Patriots just before Super Boxl XLII. Selected filmography * Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild (2006) - Mr Frederick Little (voice) * Valiant (2005) - Wing Commander Gutsy (voice) * House (2004–present) - Dr Gregory House * Flight of the Phoenix (2004) - Ian * Stuart Little 2 (2002) - Mr Frederick Little * Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001) - Vincente Minnelli * Chica de Río (2001) - Raymond * Maybe Baby (2000) - Sam Bell * Stuart Little (1999) - Mr Fredrick Little * Blackadder: Back & Forth (1999) - Viscount George Bufton-Tufton/Georgius * Cousin Bette (1998) - Baron Hector Hulot * The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) - Pierre, The King's Advisor * The Bill (1998) * The Borrowers (1997) - Police Officer Steady * Spiceworld (1997) - Poirot * 101 Dalmatians (1996) - Jasper * Tracey Takes On... (1996) - Timothy Bugge (Season 1) * Sense and Sensibility (1995) - Mr Palmer * Peter's Friends (1992) - Roger Charleston * Jeeves and Wooster (1990–1993) - Bertie Wooster * The New Statesman (1989) - Waiter * Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) - Lt the Honourable George Colhurst St Barleigh * A Bit of Fry and Laurie (1989–1995) - writer/various characters * Blackadder the Third (1987) - George, Prince of Wales, Prince Regent * Filthy Rich & Catflap (1986) - N'Bend * Happy Families (1985) - Jim * Blackadder II (1985) - Simon Partridge (also known as Mr Ostrich & Farters Parters), Prince Ludwig the Indestructible * The Young Ones (1984) - Lord Monty * Alfresco (1983–1984) - writer/various characters Books * The Gun Seller (1996) * The Paper Soldier (September 2009) References External links * Hugh Laurie at IMDb * Hugh Laurie interview with the Guardian * Hugh Laurie interview with Time Out de:Hugh Laurie fr:Hugh Laurie http://es.dr-house.wikia.com/wiki/Hugh_Laurie Category:Actors Category:Spanish